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Are Videogames Art?
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Sep 09, 2006 04:56 PM
from the we've-been-over-this-before-but-it's-worth-repeating dept.
from the we've-been-over-this-before-but-it's-worth-repeating dept.
Game Politics, as always, has some meaty thoughts on offer. Today they're revisiting the perpetual question, 'Can videogames be considered art?'. They touch on the words of Roger Ebert, and discuss a recent piece on the subject in the Sydney Herald. From the article: "Brendan McNamara, game director for Team Bondi, makers of the upcoming film noir PS3 game L.A. Noire, has no doubt his team is creating art. With a project plan that includes 170 pages describing cinematic moments, and 1,200 pages detailing interactive events, the game has a Hollywood-like budget of more than $30 million. 'We control the delivery of the information ... We give players a setting and a framework, we control what they see and do. So how are we not authors?' McNamara wonders if video games are stigmatized because they are a mostly commercial venture. At the same time, he believes that being driven by sales is a good thing." What is the Slashdot opinion? Are games too different from other form of expression to be considered art? Is Shadow of the Colossus comparable to Leaves of Grass or Citizen Kane?
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Review: Shadow of the Colossus 176 comments
Ico was the name of the game, an arty and beautiful vision of a young man with horns on a quest to save a silent princess. Like a pair of finely wrought bookends, Ico's spiritual successor sees the PS2 in its final days in the same way that the original title helped introduce the console to gamers at launch. Shadow of the Colossus is a breathtaking living canvas, with gameplay it's hard not to appreciate and a soul that everyone can identify with. Unfortunately, Shadow is not a perfect game. A few technical problems keep the title from achieving the zen-like state that it comes so close to achieving. Despite that, it's a title that no PS2 owner should deny themselves the chance to experience. Read on for my impressions of Sony's Shadow of the Colossus.
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The Epic Ebert Videogame Debate 169 comments
Via Kotaku, a column at Ebert.com going into some depth on the are-games-actually-art debate. Ebert engaged in a public debate on the subject at last week's Conference on World Affairs. From the article: "Going in to the videogame panel, I'd been hoping the audience (mostly students) would be fired up about the subject and challenge the panelists, but they were unfortunately pretty passive. Maybe they were intimidated by the rather formal (for Boulder) theater setting, I don't know. Ebert began by explaining why he felt a game (particularly the shoot-shoot, point-scoring kind) was not an experience equivalent to that of reading a great novel like, say, 'The Great Gatsby,' because games don't delve very deeply into what it means to be human."
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Making Statements With Video Games 329 comments
You may have heard about the recent controversy at the Leipzig Games Conference over a modification of Space Invaders in which the invaders are slowly demolishing the World Trade Center. The creator intended it as an artistic expression, but has since removed the game, saying, "it was never created to merely provoke controversy for controversy's sake." Kotaku took this occasion to ask whether "statements" can and should be made via video games, and how it affects the ongoing question of whether video games should be considered art.
"The entire issue begs comparisons to Danny Ledonne's Super Colombine Massacre RPG!, an unsettling and involved title that tasks players on the most basic level with acting out the 1999 Littleton, Colorado school shooting in the role of killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Ledonne told the Washington Post that his intention with the title was never to glorify the tragedy, but to 'confront their actions and the consequences those actions had.' Like Stanley's Invaders!, Ledonne and his title stopped short of providing a direct interpretation - neither artist has been especially specific about 'what it means,' or in instructing players on how they should interpret their work or what 'message' should be taken away."
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Censored Video Game Content Stifles Artistry 289 comments
AnInkle writes "The question of whether modern video games represent art and the persistent attempts to censor controversial content in games have been discussed here at length. Now, a blogger at The Tech Report makes the case that censorship of violent and sexual images and themes in video games is precisely what inhibits video games from maturing artistically beyond a nascent form. He cites a historical comparison between video game and film production, as well as geo-cultural comparisons of film production in the US vs. Europe and of video game development in the US vs. Japan. Are these comparisons apt and the assertions valid, or might the embrace of video games as a legitimate art form be limited for entirely different reasons?"
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Little boys (Score:3, Insightful)
I remember, just on the radio, how a professional personal ad writer said that an example of an unworthy person is "living in his mom's basement, playing Nintendo". Sorry, but that's the public's view.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Little boys (Score:5, Funny)
Ever seen MySpace? That's what kids end up doing if they're calling the shots. Fuckin' little losers.
Mark my words: you see a kid, you beat the crap out of the fucker until his nose bleeds for a week. Serves him right. And it doesn't matter if you don't know why you had to beat him, he sure as hell knows.
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There's no such thing as art (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the deeper message that we can draw out here is that there is no such thing as art. In other words, there is no unbreachable division between what is art and what is not, and there is no magical quintessence that makes something automatically artistic. Art, I propose, is just a label applied by self-appointed judges regarding their own arbitary tastes. The proper response is not to endlessly try to justify electronic entertainment as 'art' in the eyes of pretentious old men, but to note that their opinion does not actually matter. The next generation, no doubt, will have their own idea of art, and their own view of what will be culturally significant, and the scorn of today's judges have no meaning in this respect.
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Re:There's no such thing as art (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:There's no such thing as art (Score:5, Insightful)
So your definition, as cynically as you offered it, is pretty much right on. Art requires artist and audience (these roles may overlap, or, as in much music, be separated further by tradition). That is all.
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Re:There's no such thing as art (Score:4, Informative)
Did YOU ever study cage? Because you entirely missed the point.
Cage believed that there are elements of a musical performance that are entirely out of the composer's control, things that are random and spontaneous that nevertheless inflect what's going on on the stage. Every sneeze by the audience, every cough, every whispered conversation, every squeaking chair as an audience member gets up and leaves in disgust, ALL of it is in some way a part of the music you're listening to.
What Cage did was, to bring this passed-over element of musical performance to light, he wrote a piece of music that entirely accentuated the random sub-elements of performance by eliminating the music entirely, thereby making people more conscious of their immediate surroundings. THAT'S why 4'33" is important; it has nothing to do with this bullshit 'what is art?' argument.
Triv
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Re:There's no such thing as art (Score:5, Insightful)
This is called reflexivity - the art work interrogating itself or its medium or its exhibition, precisely to ask the question "why is this art?" You can't answer that question without first answering the question "what is art?"
Are these coughs art? Are the conversations art? If so, why? Where does the art stop and everything else begin?
Personally I don't think that's good art. I find it pretentious. It doesn't do anything for me. It doesn't require any technical skill. It asks obvious questions. But anything that is interpreted as a piece of art work can be considered art even if it isn't good art.
As soon as you say something is art it becomes art. The question is then "why do we say that this is art?" since there is no objective definition of "art."
The art crowd has fooled us into thinking that there is something that is objectively art or objectively "good" art. That is absurd. Art is based entirely on how its interpreted and perceived - how can it be anything before it touches your eyes or mouth? There are no concepts communicated by the art piece as an object *in itself*, just like there is nothing communicated by regular objects just in virtue of themselves. Everything we say it communicates is actually an imposition of our minds. Things outside of us have no semantic meaning by themselves, without observers.
When it encounters an audience - be it the artist him/herself or people in a crowd - it becomes art. This is radically subjective definition of art, that some people find offensive. I don't. I think it is everything art is supposed to be - human. It depends on the humans participating in the viewing and the making of it.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, that's incorrect. The piece is NOT named "4 minutes and 33 seconds" as everyone likes to point out, the name of the piece, as Cage titled it, is "Silence". But the naming of the piece, for the program's sake, is to be the intended duration of the particular performance. I've read his performance notes for the piece, 4'33" is never included anywhere in them. It just so happens that the first performance, which was done in 3 movements by a pianist, btw, happened to be 4 minutes and 33 seconds long,
Or rather everything is art... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the deeper message that we can draw out here is that there is no such thing as art. In other words, there is no unbreachable division between what is art and what is not, and there is no magical quintessence that makes something automatically artistic.
Maybe "everything is art" is closer to what you are getting at?
Wikipedia, as usual, as a good writeup on Defining art [wikipedia.org] ( Why the editors don't routinely include WP links on core concepts, is beyond me ).
My personal definition of art is anything that inspires without obvious utility.
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Stigmatized, yes (Score:4, Insightful)
Art vs commerce (Score:5, Insightful)
Because movies, of course, are made for no more reason than pure artistic expression...
Games as Literature (Score:2)
http://www.thegamechair.com/2006/02/03/games-as-li tera [thegamechair.com]
Of course they are (Score:2)
"Good art" is another question entirely.
Re: (Score:2)
True, but what constitutes "art" is, itself, subjective. I used the 'narrative' example as an easy one (I thought) no one would argue with.
Well... (Score:2)
Of course video games are art (Score:2)
Number of pages? Budget? (Score:4, Insightful)
Pong != Art, therefore Video Game = Art (Score:2, Insightful)
The definition of art, for example, does not quite cover things like the gameplay design, the AI, and the game mechanics. Can anyone here actually consider the game Pong as art?
The word 'art' is all about aesthetic prope
I completely disagree. (Score:3, Interesting)
It is that achieves a satisfactory experience through the user's experience that is much more than one would expect when looking at all the pieces individually (sound, graphics, interface).
You could have a massively hyped game with great individual assets (think Daikatana), yet the composition and feedback loop with the user is decidedly lacking. Some character models could be very artistic, but the whole combined product is forced; dead.
Pong is the
Penny Arcade (Score:3, Informative)
Almost always not art. (Score:2)
Is $THING art? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've often considered that the thing which is most functional for its purpose is the best art. Think "chair." Four legs, seat, back. A perfect representation of "that upon which people sit," and you can actually sit on it.
So let's think about videogames. Are they art? Is Monopoly (the board game) art? Is chess? Is a paper airplane? Is masturbation? All these things entertain us, in one form or another.
Fact is, whether or not $THING is art is wholly subjective, depending on the person making the determination. Beyond that, there's whether or not $THING (which may or may not be art) is good art or bad art.
That's a whole other discussion.
Define: art (Score:4, Interesting)
Art: The products of human creativity. (Source [princeton.edu])
Art: The expression of creativity or imagination, or both. (Source [wikipedia.org])
Art: The formal expression of a conceived image or imagined conception in terms of a given medium. (Source [k12.ca.us])
With these definitions, I consider video games to be art. I always have considered them art. They are simply an expression of human creativity. Being on an interactive medium only adds to the art.
Re:Define: art (Score:4, Insightful)
Mankind has been try to define art for thousands of years, and, you know, I'm not sure you quite solved it with three links and a few sentences.
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